Dominic Foster

How To Set Up Subversion On Dreamhost

If you want to set up a great the great open source version control software, Subversion, on your favourite webhosting company, DreamHost, then this post is for you.

I have been wanting to set up an online version control system for everything that I am working on for some time but had always shied away thinking that it was too hard to sort out (read: I’m lazy).

I thought that my hosting company DreamHost had a ‘One Click Install’ of this, but whenever I checked the install page I could never see it, so continued to trawl the net for a tutorial that would make setting it up manually seem easier than it would ever be.

However, yesterday, I noticed that Subversion has a page all to itself in the DreamHost ‘Goodies’ menu!

So I clicked on the link and there is a page which makes it look easy as to install it and get it working.

So here is what I did:

1. Created a new subdomain on the domain where I wanted to install Subversion. I’m not sure if it would work by installing it into a directory in a domain that is also a website. Maybe it would and maybe it would take a whole load more configuring and maybe it would stuff up your website an corrupt your repository … so when you don’t need to pay anything extra for as many subdomains (or domains) as you want, then you may as well create a dedicated subdomain and save yourself the grief.
2. Wait for the subdomain to propagate. If you install when the subdomain is created but not properly propagated then you run the risk of creating a dodgy repository. It took about 4 hours for the subdomain to propagate.
3. Install Subversion:
   1. Go to the Subversion page in the Goodies tab (pictured).
   2. Choose a Project Name - e.g. “My Subversion Project”.
   3. Choose a Project ID. This must be alpha-numeric (no spaces etc..). Just use something descriptive that will identify the project - e.g. “mysubversionproject”.
   4. Select the URL you want to install it into from the drop-down list. The URL will be the subdomain that you created. You will notice that the text box next to the drop-down list is filled with the same text as your project ID. Change it if you must, but I wouldn’t bother.
   5. Add you usernames and passwords in the format - 1 user per line:
      username password
      username password
      username password
   6. Select to make it private or public.
   7. Click the “Create my new project repository now” button.
4. You’re good to go!

Now, if like me, you are planning on developing on you workstation and you hate using SSH to administer website stuff, then you will want to use Tortoise SVN. This gives you a Windows GUI application to work with your subversion repository. It will embed itself into windows explorer and give you ‘right click’ functionality for your working folders and files.

Each time you perform an action with Tortoise, you will need to supply you username and password that you gave for your Subversion install. You can select for this to be saved by Tortoise so that you don’t have to keep typing it in.

Now I can develop on my workstation and pull the code down to my laptop when I’m working in Starbucks! Also, all my client work can be rolled back easily when the client decides that they don’t actually want the feature that they screamed and shouted for anymore. No more unpicking code of reverting to backup up copies.

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